Ask him how many cars he's got

In a typicallyl muddled column, New York Times windbag Paul Klugman seems happy--or is he?--that Barack Obama has dropped his knife and turned into a gunslinger in the coming showdown with John McCain. It's hard to to tell, because after Klugman intially seems glad that Obama is getting tougher on McCain, he goes limp, arguing that toughness isn't required because Republicans are so hated that McCain is bound to lose.

Klugman wrote:

The central fact of this year’s election is that voters are fed up with Republican rule. The only way Mr. McCain can win the presidential race is if it becomes a contest of personalities rather than parties — and if his campaign can instill in voters the perception that Mr. Obama is a suspicious character while Mr. McCain is a fine, upstanding gentleman.

The Obama campaign, on the other hand, doesn’t need to convince voters either that he’s the awesomest candidate ever or that Mr. McCain is a villain. All it has to do is tarnish Mr. McCain’s image enough so that voters see this as a race between a Democrat and a Republican. And that’s a race the Democrat will easily win.

So, no need to ridicule McCain for not knowing how many houses or cars he owns. Funny thing, though, the public continues to rate the Democratic-controlled C0ngress lower in job performance than the Republican president, George Bush. Perhaps voters are equally fed up with both parties, a concession that the Democratic pawn Klugman would never admit.